System Restore - What is this folder ?

void tools Everything which I have already, reveals nothing.
FreeBooter- it shows up after using ShadowExplorer, now what ? Not sure how to access, Thanks !

I've no suggestions but will be watching this thread as a learning opportunity.

From its position in the vssadmin list it would appear to be your Disk 0, partition 4, 'Healthy (OEM Partition)'

Not sure if this applies, but I found a virtual drive magically appeared after I opted into OneDrive's new Personal Vault option. It remained even after opting out until I did a clean install.

New OneDrive behavior after Personal Vault Setup

Bree said:

From its position in the vssadmin list it would appear to be your Disk 0, partition 4, 'Healthy (OEM Partition)'

Bree; this is just what it turned out to be ! As for the entire process, I had 3 partitions between C and D from past upgrades, I presume. I merged them and then extended into C so nothing in between. I did the Repair install and it put a 583mb partition between C and D.
Thinking to make room in future, I expanded it into C. This larger partition is what System Restore must have reading. After your suggestion, I removed it entirely again, by extending D right up to C, rebooted and, sure enough, the phantom drive is gone.
Now, the Q is, was that partition essential to Recovery or is it just MS Reserved or what ? It appears that all is running just fine, as show in screenshot below. If it's necessary, I could do just do another Repair Install (figured good time since no updates to 1909 til next week) and leave it alone this time, or just wait until 20H1 and have it rebuilt, by default. What do you think ?

mrgeek said:

Now, the Q is, was that partition essential to Recovery or is it just MS Reserved or what ?

No, it won't be the Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR). That is usually 16MB in W10 and is never shown in Disk Management. Minitools Partition Wizard, Macrium Reflect and others will show it.

Is it essential? No, it just contains the WinRE recovery tools that can also be run by booting from a W10 install usb or a W10 recovery drive usb.

Was yours even in use before you removed it? In a command prompt (admin) the command reagentc /info will show if you have the recovery environment enabled, and where it is located. It is actually possible to have the WinRE enabled, but stored in a Recovery folder on your C: partition, rather than in a partition of its own.

"In a command prompt (admin) the command reagentc /info will show if you have the recovery environment enabled, and where it is located."

I think the one marked WinRE at start/far L of partition table has been there since I went from 8.1 to 10. According to screener, it appears RecovEnviro not enabled but if an MCT usb can initiate a Recovery at boot, I'll leave, as is until 20H1 makes it's own ?

mrgeek said:

void tools Everything which I have already, reveals nothing.
FreeBooter- it shows up after using ShadowExplorer, now what ? Not sure how to access, Thanks !

Everything was to be used to find only the log files.
The log files would then be searched to find a match.

zbook said:

Everything was to be used to find only the log files.The log files would then be searched to find a match.

Understood; found all those logs but no matching partial strings. Agree that it's ok to leave system with the partition between C and D removed ?

Open administrative command prompt and copy and paste: (all at one time)

Code:

bcdedit /enum all
bcdedit | find "osdevice"
reaentc /info
diskpart
lis dis
lis vol
sel dis 0
det dis
lis par
sel par 1
det par
sel par 2
det par
sel par 3
det par
sel par 4
det par
sel par 5
det par
sel par 6
det par

When these have completed > right click on the top bar or title bar of the administrative command prompt box > left click on edit then select all > right click on the top bar again > left click on edit then copy > paste into the thread


Download and install Minitool Partition Wizard > post an image of the results into this thread
MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition - Free download and software reviews - CNET Download.com